The view from a former EU official

See here the text of an informal luncheon address by my friend Michael Graham, former EU official currently living in Beijing, looking at BREXIT in a historical context.
It was addressed in Beijing at a Chinese-American group on 6 March 2017.

The title:
BREXIT AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
PERCEPTIONS AND OUTLOOK IN THE UK AND IN EUROPE
Download here: 170306 Brexitspeechrev3

EU and Brexit

The well researched document gives a unique insight and provides historical data on how the EU was set up and evolved over the years, how the complex interactions between the UK and the rest of the EU changed, how it led to Brexit, and how it could affect the Brexit negotiations. It also explains the underlying causes that lead to the Brexit vote.

No Dunkirk Spirit Can Save Britain From Brexit Defeat
The following article from the New York Times gives a rather sober/somber outlook on what Brexit could mean for the UK: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/28/opinion/dunkirk-christopher-nolan-brexit.html

See here two quotes:

A senior ex-diplomat, a man who has spent a professional lifetime building up Britain’s trade and its credibility with investors, is aghast at what the Brexit chaos is doing to our reputation. “The core narrative of the country for the past 40 years has been that we’re stable and politically predictable; the ideal platform for investing into the single market,” he told me. “And now we’re rudderless and in a mess.”
…
Britain is not an economic powerhouse waiting to be liberated. We are a country of mediocre education and limited skills, whose preening vanity has prevented us from seeing our failings. Our membership in the European Union is not a set of restraints; it is what has been propping us up. If we insist on cutting ourselves off, parts of our economy will start to die.

Does not sound encouraging…